After weeks of teasing, Games Workshop has revealed a new edition of its competitive skirmish wargame Warhammer 40k: Kill Team. The new edition will first be available in the Hivestorm box set, which will go on preorder in September for an October release. It comes with new models for elite Militarum Tempestus Aquilons and alien Vespid Stingwings, and the rules for all factions will be available for free online at launch.
GW revealed the new edition of Warhammer 40k Kill Team during a dedicated livestream on Saturday. Teasers this week clued the community in to expect a new season of Kill Team with models for two Warhammer 40k factions – we had our money on Elysian Drop Troops being one of them – but the announcement of a new edition comes pretty much out of the blue.
The narrative for the Hivestorm box set takes place on the world of Volkus in the Chalnath expanse, a region currently contested by the Imperium of Man, T’au Empire, and Orks. Factions are sending in drop troops to battle for control of a single, insanely large gun.
Warhammer 40k Kill Team 3rd edition rules changes
Warhammer 40,000 lead writer Wade Pryce and Kill Team designer Elliot (no surname given) spilled the beans on the new, third edition, in a video interview. We’ve summarised the key points, or you can watch the whole thing below:
The rules for all the existing factions will be made available for free online when the new edition launches. Elliot says that this will be a source of living rules, making it easier to update with errata or balance patches, and going forward players won’t need to buy books to get their faction rules.
This is the first time Games Workshop has made the full rules free for a game it is still supporting with model releases. It’s years behind most other wargame manufacturers, but very welcome nonetheless.
Kill Team third edition’s rules will be very similar to the current version except for “targeted improvements”. An emphasis has apparently been placed on making those rules more accessible to new players. Core rules have been reworded to be clearer, while a separate “key principles” section is intended to provide definitive answers for edge cases and competition rulings.
The new rules will introduce universal equipment which is available to every faction. This includes a range of deployable scenery, a set of which will be packed in with the Hivestorm box set.
Putting the kill back into “Kill Team”, missions will now have a “kill op” which provides victory points for inflicting casualties.
The game adds rules for both solo and co-op play. You can actually see a variant of this concept in the recently-released Darktide board game, a co-op dungeon crawler that uses the Kill Team rules engine. Elliot suggests that, as well as being fun for players who enjoy co-op and solo wargaming, it will be a rewarding way for veterans to introduce new players to the game.
Peeking ahead at the contents of the Kill Team: Hivestorm box set, the updated measuring ruler tells us that the movement bands in the game remain the same as ever, with one major difference. The system of labelling each distance with a shape is gone. Thank the Emperor – it was horribly confusing.
Kill Team Hivestorm box set contents
The new Warhammer 40k Kill Team: Hivestorm box set contains 22 models, terrain, core rules, useful tokens, matched play cards, dice, and measuring tools. The full box set contents are:
- Vespid Stingwings Kill Team, 11 models.
- Tempestus Aquilons Kill Team, 11 models.
- 14 pieces of urban ruins scenery for Kill Zone Volkus.
- Hivestorm Dossier, with lore about the war for Volkus, unique missions, and full rules for both Kill Teams.
- The Upgrade Equipment pack, which has measuring tools and placeable terrain like barbed wire and scaling ladders that any faction can purchase as mission equipment.
- Approved Operations cards, a full set of mission cards, Tac Ops, and maps for matched play.
- Dice.
- General Kill Team tokens.
- Tokens for the Vespids and Aquilons.
Existing players who don’t want to get the whole box set will be able to buy the new core rules as a separate hardback edition. There will be support for existing terrain collections: the Approved Operations cards include leaflets giving two terrain layouts for each of the Kill Zones released during second edition.
The narrative missions in the Hivestorm Dossier focus on asymmetrical drop assaults, with one player defending a position and the other deploying from above. This isn’t limited to the two factions in the box set, so if you’ve got a team of Space Marines scouts or Sisters of Battle novitiates, you can still hurl them into the fray. The Hivestorm Dossier will not be sold separately.
Kill Teams in the Hivestorm box set
Two new Kill Teams debut in the Hivestorm box set, the Tempestus Aquilons and the Vespid Stingwings.
Tempestus Aquilons Kill Team
Tempestus Aquilons are specially-trained Tempestus Scions with a particular focus on aerial insertion missions, wielding lightweight, cut-down variants of standard Tempestus weaponry.
The Scions are the elite special forces of the Astra Militarum. They are all recruited from the Schola Progenium, orphanages that care for the children of those slain in the Emperor’s wars, and raised with the highest levels of discipline. The Aquilons aren’t more elite, but they are specialised for their role.
In Kill Team, the Aquilons have the ability to hold part of their team back in reserve and deploy them during the mission. Their dropzone is represented by markers which can gradually advance throughout the mission, zeroing in on a target.
Vespid Stingwings Kill Team
Vespid Stingwings are one of the many alien species that fight as auxiliaries in the armies of the T’au Empire. They’re an insectile species, and originate from a gas giant which supplies unique crystals that power their weapons.
Vespids are armed with neutron-blaster weapons which gain power from the harmonic resonance between the crystals and the vibration of the Vespids’ wings. The Vespid are extremely aggressive – there’s a rumor that the Communion Helm worn by their unit leader is actually a T’au mind control device.
In Kill Team, they’re lightly armored and very maneuvrable. Their weapons power up if they move before shooting, reflecting their crystal harmonics. When you’re playing them, you’ll have a limited pool of Communion points that will affect how many actions you can take that aren’t simply advancing and attacking, reflecting a T’au handler ‘suggesting’ tactics to their instinctive charges.
Kill Team is very successful as a competitively balanced skirmish game, but it’s strong core rules are lost in a sometimes occult rulebook, and the current measuring tool is also a crime against tabletop graphic design. If all the new edition does is fix the measuring tool and remove some of the obfuscation from the rulebook, this will be a sure-fire hit.
For skirmish game fans who’d like something that’s as tightly written as Kill Team but a little less intense, check out our preview of Fallout: Factions. It’s a breezy game from the designer of Necromunda 2017 which we’re very keen on – so watch this space for our review.
Source: Wargamer
